The Real Story: My rise & fall through it all: my struggles with finding happiness and love while fumbling through depression. Finding success, wealth, and notoriety while encountering equal, if not greater, failures and errors in judgement. Then finding myself somehow discovering and recapturing love and other things I had lost along the way. And in all of this, I have now realized what I sacrificed and those I hurt by paying the ultimate price; the Dao of Chris.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

DoD should ponder cause and effect

United States Department of Defense Logo

Defense Department directives should mandate an analysis of unintended changes to the political landscape of a country that a security force enters before the force is deployed... At least the Government Accountability Office, "GAO", seemingly agrees with me.

In a Nov. 30 presentation to the House Committee on Armed Services, reproduced in a Jan. 8 report, GAO says the DoD already has guidance for considering unintended consequences and moral hazards when developing a security force, but needs a specific policy obligating such consideration. In my experience, such enforcement is apparently selective.

A moral hazard is when security force assistance causes a country or its leaders to behave as if they were protected from the consequences of their actions--such as undertaking new oppression of citizens or military aggression against neighbors that would not happen a without security force presence.

In three joint doctrine publications, DoD outlines concerns for security force operations that support nation building and protect a society from insurgency, lawlessness and subversion.

Some input from the State Department is required by law and tied to the funding of security forces, but GAO suggests that DoD also update relevant directives to incorporate unintended risk considerations at similar levels regardless of the legal requirement.

The Afghan Security Forces and Coalition Support funds legally require concurrence from the secretary of state and are reviewed by the department's relevant experts and bureaus, which the report says gives these funds the best chance for identifying potential unintended consequences.

Counterdrug support funds for other nations legally requires a consultation, but GAO says this standard is vague and these actions typically do not receive the same level of review as those that require concurrence.